The most helpful favorable review

The most helpful critical review

816 of 862 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 starsA very intriguing series of peculiar events
To be honest, when I first started reading "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children" I expected a haunting thriller, full of horror and danger. That is not what this book is. Instead, this book is fantasy/adventure combined with a very unique style of photography, which made the book better than I ever thought it would be.

3.0 out of 5 starsNot good for Kindle
The story is amazing. However, the book is peppered with hand written letters and amazing vintage photographs which are hard to see and impossible to read on the Kindle. Purchasing this book in hard copy is the only way to go.

To be honest, when I first started reading "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children" I expected a haunting thriller, full of horror and danger. That is not what this book is. Instead, this book is fantasy/adventure combined with a very unique style of photography, which made the book better than I ever thought it would be.

Story - Jacob Portman desires an adventurous life, much like the life his grandfather describes to him in various stories. However, when Jacob realizes that he can never have an adventurous life, he just tries to be normal and fit in. He's not popular or extremely smart, and there doesn't seem to be anything unusual about him at all; but when his grandfather dies and leaves Jacob a cryptic message, Jacob is sent on a hunt to find his grandfather's past and ends up traveling all the way to Wales. Once there, Jacob discovers much more than he ever could have imagined about his grandfather and is thrown into the midst of a very peculiar situation.

Writing Style - If I had to compare Ransom Riggs to any other author, I would have to compare him to Lemony Snicket. In fact, this entire book reminded me very much of Mr. Snicket's "A Series of Unfortunate Events" books. Don't get me wrong, Riggs did not steal Lemony Snicket's writing style at all, but Riggs just simply reminded me of him, which is a positive since I pretty much love anything that Snicket touches.Something else that I feel Riggs did superbly was explain the detail of everything in the story. Even without the occasional photographs of people and things in the story, I was able to visualize the locations and details because of the fantastic descriptions.Now, as for the photographs, they added a whole new dimension to the story. They didn't turn the novel into a picture book or something else that we normally associate with children; rather, they added a new level of immersion to the story, with the reader being almost able to see exactly what Jacob is seeing as he looks at the many photographs scattered throughout.The book is truly addicting, but it isn't perfect; there are a few kinks that I feel needed to be worked out. The major kink being the fact that the attitude of some of the characters just doesn't seem to match the story! The abundance of cursing and crude humor just doesn't make sense with some of the characters or the plot of the story. Also, there were a few things that weren't developed as much as possible and could have been explained more and built upon.

Warnings - Language, Mild Violence, Mild Peril

Overall - In all fairness, my last complaint was very nitpicky and small, and I don't want to give anyone the impression that this is not a good book. For a first novel, it is fantastic! There are a few things to improve on, but I think Mr. Riggs is off to an amazing start! I immensely look forward to his second novel, which I assume is in the works based on the cliffhanger at this end of the story. I would say that, most likely, teens will enjoy the book more than adults, but it really does have a very interesting plot that many will love.

The story is amazing. However, the book is peppered with hand written letters and amazing vintage photographs which are hard to see and impossible to read on the Kindle. Purchasing this book in hard copy is the only way to go.

When I first heard of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs with its intriguing title, cover, and premise, I was immediately smitten. I love odd books and this one seemed unique in every way. I'm very glad to report that Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children was so enthralling that it overcame jet lag from a 10-hour plane ride - I just had to read to the end!

Jacob has always been in awe of his colorful Grandpa Portman, who told him stories about his fabled childhood in a faraway island where he lived in order to hide from monsters. Jacob first believed in his grandfather's extraordinary tales of his friends, strange orphans with magical abilities, especially since his grandfather had photographs as proof of their existence. However, as he grew older, Jacob began to doubt that the stories, the orphans, or the photographs, were real...until his grandfather's cryptic last words and a letter from a mysterious Miss Peregrine spur Jacob to search for his grandfather's childhood home, which turns out to be in a small island off the coast of Wales. What he finds there is completely unexpected.

"The trees parted like a curtain and suddenly there it was, cloaked in fog, looming atop a weed-choked hill. The house. I understood at once why the boys had refused to come.

"My grandfather had described it a hundred times, but in his stories, the house was always a bright, happy place---big and rambling, yes but full of light and laughter. What stood before me now was no refuge from monsters, but a monster itself, staring down from its perch with vacant hunger. Trees burst forth from broken windows and skins of scabrous vine gnawed at the walls like antibodies attacking a virus--as if nature itself had waged war against it---but the house seemed unkillable, resolutely upright despite the wrongness of its angles and the jagged teeth of sky visible through sections of collapsed roof.

...

"I gathered up what scrawny courage I had and waded through waist-high weeds to the porch, all broken tile and rotting wood, to peek through a cracked window. All I could make out through the smeared glass were the outlines of furniture, so I knocked on the door and stood back to wait in eerie silence, tracing the shape of Miss Peregrine's letter in my pocket. I'd taken it along in case I needed to prove who I was, but as a minute ticked by, then two, it seemed less and less likely that I would need it."

What happened to the inhabitants of this devastated ruin and how was Grandfather Portman involved? Jacob's investigation turns from creepy to heart-palpitatingly scary, then poignant. Where the story went truly surprised me, not only delivering on its promise of eccentric and dark but inventing a rich and magical other world of "peculiar" children and monsters that's convincingly woven with real history.

The writing is so descriptive and evocative that I now question if the vintage photographs interspersed throughout the narratives are even necessary to the enjoyment of the story. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children was apparently inspired by these weird photographs the author found, each with something so off-kilter about them that they can inspire multiple fantastic stories on their own. While I loved the photographs, they were a bonus rather than essential.

I wanted to like this book. The premise is really charming, and the boy Jacob is such a lovely character. I also loved the idea of a story based upon found photography. I read this book on my Kindle, and I want to say up front that I adore my Kindle. BUT, I'm not sure that this book works in the electronic format. I could not see any detail in the photographs, which was so disappointing. Also, without giving away anything, there is a note written at the very end by a key character, which I could not read as it was placed in the book as a photograph. So, that being said, my guess is that I missed a great deal from this book that might have helped me enjoy it more. I also would like to say that I found the 1st half of the book far more enjoyable than the 2nd half. Mr. Riggs seems to lose some focus toward the end, arbitrarily wrapping things up as though he's run out of things to say. Lastly, THE ENDING, which is the reason for my two star rating. I found the end so unsatisfying that I didn't even know I was at the end! I turned the page expecting more book! I realize that the current economics of the publishing world dictates that virtually every story is supposed to be one of a series of books. However, this book was such a blatant set up, and so incomplete on it's face, that I found myself a little angry at Mr. Riggs. I would love to read a book that is a complete story in itself, and not the potential for a movie deal or a sequel. Just saying....

Ransom Riggs is a good writer if not a particularly talented one. He tells this story adequately and without any groan-worthy lines (Lev Grossman, I'm thinking of you). Unfortunately, whereas Grossman sometimes fails because he's so ambitious, Riggs never tries to do anything more than tell a story adequately. Several times while reading through "Peculiar Children" I kept thinking Ransom Riggs would be just as successful writing Hardy Boy adventures or Doc Savage stories; he has no clear voice.

And the photographs actually work against him. Too often, this book reads like a contest entry where the players are asked to compose a story around a group of random, vaguely unsettling photographs. And several times it feels like certain photos were added simply because it had been too long a stretch between pictures. I went into the book thinking Riggs was inspired by various photographs. I finished the book thinking the pictures were a gimmick that succeeded in getting publicity but failed in terms of the story formed around it.

The reason I'm giving the book two stars instead of three, however, is because of the ending. There isn't one. Near the end, I began to suspect that there wasn't enough pages left to resolve the story Riggs was writing. Sure enough, it turns out that "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children" isn't a beginning, middle and end type of book, it's an introduction.

I honestly can't think of one thing to recommend about this book. I wish I could say I hated it, because at least then it would have stirred up some kind of emotion, even if that emotion was a negative one. But this book is adequate at best and extremely disappointing once you learn that it doesn't have an ending.

His whole childhood, Jacob heard his grandfather tell tales of the incredibly peculiar children with whom he grew up. The older Jacob gets, though, the more he thinks his grandfather's tales are nothing more than make believe. But, when his grandfather speaks a few cryptic words before he dies, Jacob is determined to learn the mysteries of his grandfather's youth. He ends up on a creepy island, learning the startling truth of his grandfather's life/

What an incredibly imaginative book this is; I absolutely loved it. First off, the story is so completely imaginative. The plot is so different from most of the books out there. The book is dark, and rich, and I just could not put it down. One of my favorite parts of the book was the accompanying pictures. It felt as though Riggs had taken a collection of odd photos, and wove them into an incredible story.

I though the characters were really well developed and thought out. The characters were complex, from Jacob to the peculiar children. I loved seeing all the different relationships unfold, and more than once found myself surprised about the revelations about some of the characters.

While the story is aimed at young adult readers, the story is complex enough to entertain and thrill adult readers. For me, it felt much like the Lemony Snicket books, for an older audience. The story ends in such a way that makes me hope there will be a sequel.

MISS PEREGRINE'S HOME FOR PECULIAR CHILDREN offers a unique premise in that it combines a story with vintage photographs to present a tale that is both whimsical and chilling. I loved the idea of this book. 16-year-old Jacob grows up listening to the tales of his grandfather's childhood in an orphanage filled with children with unusual powers and evil monsters lurking in the shadows. As Jacob grows older, he begins to doubt the veracity of his grandfather's tales believing that they grew out of his grandfather's struggles under the Nazi regime. When Jacob's grandfather is killed under mysterious circumstances, Jacob decides to investigate his grandfather's past by going to the orphanage where he grew up. Once there, Jacob discovers that the people...and monsters...might be real after all.

The vintage images in this book are haunting and set the tone perfectly. The mystery is creative if a bit inscrutable. I loved Jacob's search for the truth but the explanations were fuzzy and the bad guys a bit over the top. I was a little disappointed that the book wasn't MORE whimsical. It seemed to get a bit too caught up in its structural device without working more on character development. I wish the author had developed the story a bit more. I would have given it a higher rating. Still, it has a lot of mystery, action and suspense. I am divided on whether I will continue to reading the series. However, I would still recommend this book to most young adult readers looking for something unusual and different to read. It's worth it for the photos alone.

This is my first book review. I just felt compelled to share this because if the synopsis had been a little more detailed regarding the second portion of the book, I would have never read it.

*Spoiler alert*

The synopsis on Amazon, I believe, is misleading. While it is true that there are haunting photographs and it is an adventure, it doesn't mention the fact that this story turns into a time travelling, shape shifting and flesh eating monster tale. In the begining of the book Jacob, the narrator, says that what has happened to him can only be described as "Before and After." Well I LOVED the before. I was turning pages as quick as lightning to see where the "before" was taking us. I was thoroughly enjoying the pictures and loved the idea of Riggs finding these photos and piecing together a story. And then, there was the "after". "After" is some hocus pocus time loop (which I totally could've gotten into) and the disgusting monsters who attempt to penetrate the loops to eat the children and kidnap their guardian (who, by the way, is a shape shifter). A huge portion of "after" is fighting off these monsters. The "kids" (in quotes because even though they look like kids they are in their 70's and 80's in real time) are super heros. Which, I guess they sort of are, since they all have super powers. Does this book sound a little lame yet? "Before" alludes to monsters and here I was, so hoping that that was a metaphor for Nazis and I was pretty disappointed when the monster was in fact a man eating monster.

Based on glowing reviews and interesting cover art, I was pretty excited to read this one. Well, almost immediately, it became painfully apparent that I was in for disappointment.

One of my biggest pet peeves with books is inconsistency of voice. The narrator of this story is all over the place in terms of tone and style and simply sounds ridiculous half the time. The author seemed hell-bent on using as many adjectives as humanly possible, but to little effect. Rather than building a captivating world for readers to fall in love with and explore, he wastes a ton of time describing things that either don't matter one bit or that I already know what they look like. Moreover, if the author wanted to include lengthy sections of florid prose, he shouldn't have used first-person narration. It made me disconnect from the narrator and felt disingenuous. No one talks like that, no one tells a story like that, and no one spends an entire paragraph describing the state of the floorboards. Beyond that, the author has incorporated numerous old photographs into the book (like the one on the cover), but then goes on to describe everything that's in the picture. If he was going to include the picture anyway, why on earth did he spend so much time describing it? The author got bogged down with the photographs. On the one hand, they ended up being the most interesting part of the book, but they felt inorganic and forced. The author continually seemed to be conjuring reasons to include the photographs, rather than using them to supplement the story.

What's worse, even though many of the things the narrator described were fantastical and bizarre, and the photos were odd and interesting in and of themselves, I still found myself completely bored. Indeed, until I was about 150 pages in, I could barely bring myself to continue. I kept hope alive that it would get better, and finally, after way too long, it began to pick up. As the novel progressed, the author finally seemed to relax and settle into the narrative itself, rather than the flowery narration. The voice of the narrator began to feel more genuine and the story itself finally found some footing. That said, it improved to the point that I finished it, but I wouldn't recommend this book. Even after if improved, I found that I hardly cared about any of the characters and wasn't very invested in their fates. In a weird way, the narrator himself was one of the least compelling characters in the book, and one that I felt I knew the least. With him being the narrator, I should have known him intimately by the end, but either I simply didn't connect with him or there wasn't much to connect to.

At the end of the day, this novel felt more like a high school writing assignment rather than a bestseller. I think the author has some potential, but he has a long way to go before he can craft a story that will warrant a second read.

This book starts out really strong. The action starts immediately, Jacob is witty and likeable, and a chilling mystery is introduced. Ransom Riggs does a great job building suspense. I felt almost felt like I was reading a ghost story at the beginning, with the constant references to the past and the expectation of something extremely scary happening. But my expectations fall flat, and I realized that this book is a little bit all over the place.

The pacing of the book is off. The beginning moves quickly, the end moves quickly, and the middle just laaaaaags. I felt the middle focused more on world-building (although Riggs does portray a very unique world) and introducing characters than actually moving the plot forward, and there could have been a better balance.

I also felt like there were a lot of flat characters. I think Jacob and Emma are the most well-rounded characters, and Emma only appears in half of the book. I think a lot of this might be because this is Riggs' debut novel and he has a LARGE cast of characters. My guess is that the sequel will be much smoother.

As for the photographs, I thought that including them was a really novel idea (no pun intended) and I found them interesting. The constant reference to the photographs, however, got soooooo annoying. Riggs seemed to operate with a formula every time it was time for a photo: Jacob either recalled a photo he had seen earlier and described what the photograph looked like, or someone whipped out a photo album. I felt that calling such blatant attention to the photographs in the narrative got redundant and disrupted the narration.

Overall, lots of interesting ideas, but the presentation needs some work. If the sequel is more polished, I think this will turn into a very compelling series.